management software

Project management software is a term covering many types of software, including scheduling, cost control and budget management, resource allocation, collaboration software, communication, quality management and documentation or administration systems, which are used to deal with the complexity of large projects.

Tasks or activities of project management software

[edit] Scheduling

One of the most common purposes is to schedule a series of events or tasks and the complexity of the schedule can vary considerably depending on how the tool is used. Some common challenges include:

• Events which depend on one another in different ways or dependencies
• Scheduling people to work on, and resources required by, the various tasks, commonly termed resource scheduling
• Dealing with uncertainties in the estimates of the duration of each task

[edit] Providing information

Project planning software can be expected to provide information to various people or stakeholders, and can be used to measure and justify the level of effort required to complete the project(s). Typical requirements might include:

• Tasks lists for people, and allocation schedules for resources
• Overview information on how long tasks will take to complete
• Early warning of any risks to the project
• Information on workload, for planning holidays
• Evidence
• Historical information on how projects have progressed, and in particular, how actual and planned performance are related
• Optimum utilization of available resource

[edit] Approaches to project management software

[edit] Desktop

Project management software can be implemented as a program that runs on the desktop of each user. This typically gives the most responsive and graphically-intense style of interface.
Desktop applications typically store their data in a file, although some have the ability to collaborate with other users (see below), or to store their data in a central database. Even a file-based project plan can be shared between users if it's on a networked drive and only one user accesses it at a time.
Desktop applications can be written to run in a heterogeneous environment of multiple operating systems, although it's unusual.

[edit] Web-based

Project management software can be implemented as a Web application, accessed through an intranet, or an extranet using a web browser.
This has all the usual advantages and disadvantages of web applications:

• Can be accessed from any type of computer without installing software on user's computer
• Ease of access-control
• Naturally multi-user
• Only one software version and installation to maintain
• Centralized data repository
• Typically slower to respond than desktop applications
• Project information not available when the user (or server) is offline
• Some solutions allow the user to go offline with a copy of the data

[edit] Personal

A personal project management application is one used at home, typically to manage lifestyle or home projects. There is considerable overlap with single user systems, although personal project management software typically involves simpler interfaces. See also non-specialised tools below.

[edit] Single user

A single-user system is programmed with the assumption that only one person will ever need to edit the project plan at once. This may be used in small companies, or ones where only a few people are involved in top-down project planning. Desktop applications generally fall into this category.

[edit] Collaborative

A collaborative system is designed to support multiple users modifying different sections of the plan at once; for example, updating the areas they personally are responsible for such that those estimates get integrated into the overall plan. Web-based tools, including extranets, generally fall into this category, but have the limitation that they can only be used when the user has live Internet access. To address this limitation, some software tools using client–server architecture provide a rich client that runs on users' desktop computer and replicate project and task information to other project team members through a central server when users connect periodically to the network. Some tools allow team members to check out their schedules (and others' as read only) to work on them while not on the network. When reconnecting to the database, all changes are synchronized with the other schedules.

[edit] Integrated

An integrated system combines project management or project planning, with many other aspects of company life. For example, projects can have bug tracking issues assigned to each project, the list of project customers becomes a customer relationship management module, and each person on the project plan has their own task lists, calendars, and messaging functionality associated with their projects.
Similarly, specialised tools like SourceForge integrate project management software with source controlCVS) software and bug-tracking software, so that each piece of information can be integrated into the same system. (

[edit] Non-specialised tools

While specialised software may be common, and heavily promoted by each vendor, there are a vast range of other software (and non-software) tools used to plan and schedule projects.

• Calendaring software can often handle scheduling as easily as dedicated software
• Spreadsheets are very versatile, and can be used to calculate things not anticipated by the designers.